“Bloody hell!” hissed Gavin, under his breath. Well, almost. “Talk about rent-a-mob. Most of these people didn’t know Bomber from Bardot.”
He smiled superciliously at the photographer who was prowling up and down the aisle between the rows of seats snapping any of the “mourners” whom the public might recognize. Portia had sold the rights for the occasion to a glossy magazine that any intelligent woman would only ever admit to reading at the hairdressers. The seats were mostly filled with Portia’s own friends, associates, and hangers-on, with the occasional celebrity punctuating the populace like a sparse sequin on an otherwise dull dress. Bomber’s friends were gathered at the back around Eunice and Gavin, like theatergoers in the cheap seats.
At the front of the room, on a table festooned in yet more flowers, stood the urn. It was flanked on one side by an enormous framed photograph of Bomber (“He’d never have chosen that one,” whispered Gavin; “his hair’s a complete mess”) and on the other by a photograph of Bomber and Portia as children, with Portia on the crossbar of Bomber’s bike.
“She had to get her face in the frame, didn’t she!” fumed Gavin. “She can’t even let him be the star at his own bloody memorial! But at least I managed to persuade her to invite some of Bomber’s real friends and include something in this whole damn fiasco that Bomber might actually have liked.”
Eunice was impressed. “How on earth did you manage that?”
Gavin grinned. “Blackmail. I threatened to go to the press if she didn’t. ‘Selfish Sister Scorns Brother’s Dying Wishes’ wasn’t the kind of headline her publisher would want to see, and she knows it. Speaking of which, where is Bruce the Bouffant?” He scanned the rows of heads in front of him searching for the offending barnet.
“Oh, I expect he’ll come with Portia,” Eunice replied. “What exactly are you doing?”
Gavin looked very pleased with himself.
“It’s a surprise, but I’ll give you a clue. You remember the wedding at the beginning of Love Actually where members of the band are hidden in the congregation?”
Before he could go any further, the music changed and Portia and her entourage swept down the aisle to “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana. She was wearing a white Armani trouser suit and a hat with a brim the size of a tractor wheel swathed in black, spotted net.
“Jesus Christ!” spluttered Gavin, “You’d think she was marrying Mick Jagger!”
He clutched Eunice’s arm, barely able to contain his hysteria. Eunice’s eyes filled with tears. But they were tears of laughter. She only wished that Bomber was here to share the fun. In fact, she wished she knew where Bomber was at all. She hadn’t told Gavin about it yet. She was waiting for the right moment. The service itself was strangely entertaining. A children’s choir from a local school—private and very exclusive—sang “Over the Rainbow,” Bruce read a eulogy on Portia’s behalf as though he were delivering a soliloquy from Hamlet, and an actress from an minor soap opera read a poem by W. H. Auden. Prayers were said by a retired bishop whose daughter was apparently an old friend of Portia’s. They were short and rather difficult to decipher on account of the whiskey that he’d had with his breakfast. Or perhaps for his breakfast.
And then it was Gavin’s turn.
He rose from his chair and stood in the aisle. Using the microphone he had concealed under his seat, he addressed the gathering with a theatrical flourish.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this one’s for Bomber!”
He sat back down and a frisson of anticipation shivered through the assembly. Gavin looked at Eunice and winked.
“Showtime!” he whispered.
There was a single, thrilling chord and then from somewhere at the back of the room, a man’s voice singing softly, accompanied only by a piano. The voice came from a staggeringly handsome man wearing an immaculate dinner suit and a subtle sweep of eyeliner, who was indeed his own special creation. The opening bars of “I Am What I Am” from La Cage aux Folles floated up into the hushed air and Gavin rubbed his hands together in delight.